The title isn't totally correct in that I am not truly leaving this community. However this is my last day with Stardock and the Support Team. I am moving on into several new ventures. While I am excited at these new prospects I am sad to be going.

I wanted to take a moment to thank the community for the support they have shown me over the years. While I have many a singe mark from the flames I endured I have just as many pats on the back from those whom I helped, I am forever grateful for those whom stood up for the working stiff in the forums. Frankly I think I learned the most about the software I supported just from everyone here than I ever did at my desk.

I still intend to be a contributor to Wincustomize so you will see me around. In the mean time I hope that Stardock has a great new year and that everyone here does the same!

My personal thanks go out to Shirley, Kendo, Melibee, Highlander, and Milksama as current and former soldiers on the front line of support. They had my back in the worst of it and I wish them all the luck. Milksama epically since he was there in the beginning of all my newb ways. He and his family have always seen to me.

I wish to thank Karmagirl as being the best boss I have ever had. She was just as much a friend/older sister as she was my supervisor. She might have wailed on me when I needed it but God help you if anyone else messed with me. That was her privilege alone. I am a better man for it.

To Nakor thank you for being my crack dealer. Not actual crack mind you but worse: great books. The sort of books you don't put down until days later to find out you have been declared legally dead. Thanks too for looking out for me.

To Zargon and Phil I feel we could have gotten to know each other better but I am glad to have met you. Thank you for the kindness and the opportunities. They meant a great deal to me.

To Zubaz thanks for all the great advice, the listening ear, and the hatchet for all the would be flamers in the forums. Should you ever need something you have only to ask.

To IslandDog, Zoomba, Hankers, HG_Eliminator, and Yarlen thanks for the kindness, the encouragement, and the ability to put up with me so well. The forums are not an easy place to live but you guys always made it look so.

To Dean, TMan, Rabbit, and Kindeys... I'm sorry... I hope that is enough said.

To Dreamer - I will never forgive you for stealing the pirate flag, ever.

To Drew, Akil, Boogie, and Mor thanks for all the great advice and tips. I've come out of here learning a whole lot.

To everyone else I missed (and I'm certain there are many) my apologies. I will miss you all!

Cheers to you and yours, for all your days.

Travis aka Seabass

You'll know where to find me.....

People over the last 24+ hours have been reporting some troubles with activation. We believe this occurred through some server issues and have corrected the issue. If you are one of these people please try your activation again. If you still have troubles after that please try the manual activation method. In the listed instructions I have linked here please send the required information to both activate@stardock.com and support@stardock.com. I will be sitting on these emails all day manually decoding them should the need arise. The most important part of the information you generate is the activation string.

An activation string is a long serial number that starts like this: m=1&v=1&a1=D13A622050BB308A....

For activation trouble or activation for an offline system, please follow this guide:

https://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=447

Sorry for any trouble this has caused. Please let support know of any further issues you might run into.

Due to the fact that many members of the Operations (sales and support) team will be taking time in the middle of the Christmas vacation to come into the office for customer service we have graciously been given a day off this week. I made a post to part of this information here:

http://forums.impulsedriven.com/327819

This Wednesday marks our Christmas in... November. Well you get the idea.

The same thing will also occur on December the 10th (another Wed.)

We will return on Thursday as per normal.

Seabass

As you may or may not know the latest beta update to Object Dock Plus was retracted. At present you can only download the full version of the software. The errors that were found in the last update will take longer than expected to correct, more so they are interrupting new tools being built for the 2.0 planned update. It will take about a month to correct so expect the next beta push some time in November.

Currently customers report that they have system tray issues on Vista 64bit under the current version. 32bit should not be effected. If you are experiencing troubles with Object Dock please uninstall, restart your system, then reinstall the Plus version through Impulse.

As you might know as well the weather docklet that comes with the Plus version does not have access to all AccuWeather server sites and some citys and areas might not be represented. In case this applies to you please search out other locations near by through the docklet properties window.

Thank you very much for your patience in this matter and we hope to have a new testing beta ready for you as soon as we are able.

Seabass

[e digicons]:ninja:[/e]

Years ago when I found out that Bill Roper was creating a team at his new company and the description of the game was called and I quote "Diablo 3D" with embarrass on the three twice if you get my meaning. To quantify all of the emotions wrapped up in this article I must explain the past several years of gaming for me.

In high school Diablo came out and I was hooked. For my spring break I was grounded with with my best friend while all others were away. During the day we would work, then go home and play Diablo until we beat it, several times. Once Diablo 2 came out I was rooted deep into college and work. However every friend I had (and I do mean all of them) was playing it. We played it all the time. I failed history of Shakespear because of that game. It has been installed on every machine I have owned since as my wonderful back up. So when I heard Hellgate, saw the fantasic animation by blur, I told everyone I knew and waited like a kid for Christmas morning.

It is for that reason that I think the fall of Hellgate was more harsh than most because I think my story isn't unique. Many fans were just as crazed for the Diablo magic lightning to strike again. Some of my friends even went so far as to buy the life time subscription to the game. They did this though at the insistent pleas of caution I had thrown out in complete contradiction to years of praise. I did this as I played what became boring, tedious, and just not captivating at all. I was running down the same tunnel over and over and worst of all my semi good machine made it look like pixilated *hurk*. The drastic difference between what I saw and my friends with the insanely powerful machines was a totally different game. I was, and I mean this, heart broken.

Now several posts have gone up stating that even with the collapse of the company the servers are still up. The funny thing is I still install the game randomly just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong or missed something very critical that made it into a great game. Normally I face a game thinking that it won't be great so that my expectations are not destroyed but in this case I really wanted it to be really good. I mourn the passing of Hellgate and now look forward to Diablo 3 to ease the pain I have endured in my child like heart. In the mean time I will be back on battle net. Look with anything prefixed "Bass" and venting agression like a angry bull on crack in a china... stadium? Well you get the idea.

Seabass

With the holidays approaching I wanted to let all of our customers know way in advance what to expect from Stardock Support/Sales.

• Support and Sales will not be present on November the 27th or the 28th for the Thanksgiving weekend.
• Support and Sales will be present on Monday December the 22nd. 
  
• Support and Sales will be present on Monday December the 29th.
  
• Support and Sales will return to the office on January the 5th to resume normal support duties.

Phone support will be suspended on both of the December dates. The two days scheduled during the holiday vacation is to stem the tide of incoming support troubles and better assist our customers.

For the Tuesday - Friday of those same weeks in December support will not be formally present.

However members of staff may pop in to the forums or answer email through the holiday weekend. You are likely to get some replies or some support through that time but it is not guaranteed nor is it required by our staff members.

Even with the extra days being staffed on email support there still may be delays once we return in January as we answer the large amount of email. At that time I will update as best as I can until we return to normal status.

A few notes to assist you during the vacation:

1. Please don't send in multiple responses as this resets the ticket time on your email. It will force it to the back of the line and support works first-come-first-serve. However if you have fixed the issue or have new information to provide feel free to send a reply to the automatic response that you received from the first message. If compose a new email there will be multiple ticket and we will not necessarily see the history of your replies or ours.
   
2. Please post your troubles in the forums as well as support@stardock.com. We are very proud of our community and both user and staff alike may offer you the help that you require.
   
3. If you do not receive an auto reply from support then we did not get your message for one reason or another. A list of possible reasons should be sent to you. If you receive nothing then you may need to check your spam filters to see if the @stardock.com domain is allowed. This is important as we don't want anyone waiting for a reply needlessly if support will not be issuing a response.
4. If you need to retrieve any of your account information please do so through here:
   
   https://www.wincustomize.com/myaccount.aspx?
   
   You may need to log into your account before using this link.

If you have any questions please let us know here!

Seabass and the support/sales team.

This last weekend our support email server burped on a few emails then choked. We have cleared the issue but weekend emails might take a small amount of extra time to clear out due to lost time. We will answer things as quickly as possible and get right back on track. In the mean time please do not send in replies asking about your tickets as they will have their time reset and will be forced back to the beginning of the line automatically. For the fastest responses please simply wait for a tech to contact you.

Thank you for your patience!

Of late, and thanks to wireless and a laptop I am spending more time with my new wife watching the current shows that are on air. Since the writers strike (where writers were all mad that the reality TV stars were not following the scripts they labored over for hours, or something like that I can't remember) I have tried to adopt some of the new shows. This is what I am certain my cats feels like when she makes those wonderful choking sounds in the hallway.

Night Rider- Never in my life have I wanted the acting talents of David Hasslehof back so badly. Did they really get Val Kilmer for the voice of the car... then decide that was a bad idea? Has anyone told them that cars already have most of this technology right off the dealer lot? If I push OnStar and refer to the operator as Kit I am more than halfway there.

Fringe - I love it as I could use a new fix for my X-Files-like needs. Trouble is the format is so palpable I can almost time it. Watch this: next time the professor comes up with a crazy experiment to catch/find/figure out the strange thing that has occurred it will take place at the 27 minute mark of the hour. Still fun to watch though even with the Dawsons Creek music playing in the back of my head when Jackson talks.

90210 returns- Tory Spelling wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. That means I am around 1,o00ft or more. The girls that I did see in passing are basically skeletons that talk. Perfect for the Halloween season.

Heros - God I want to love this show, I really do. It just wasn't made for those of us raised on super hero stories, and it wasn't written by anyone that had read one either. What I do like is that just like Lost this show will kill you... unless someone fills you with super blood then you are TOTALLY back in bro! High five!

Lost - I'm lost. It was an easy joke but seriously, I have no idea what is going on. If I wanted to sit around for an hour wondering what the hell is going on with these crazy people.... well I would call it Thanksgiving. This includes the polar bears. Props goes to a show for murdering main cast members like they were skeet.

Life - Cop gets out of prison, becomes cop again, catches guy that framed him. Now in the second season he is going after the guys that put him up to it in the first place. 3rd season.... Osama Bin Ladin? Interesting show enough but it is going to crash at what I am now calling the "Prison Break" methodology of writing. They are out of prison! It's broke! Now end it!

True Blood - I don't watch this because I don't have HBO. The premise of vampires living openly among humans sounds neat, and yet still seems boring. I'm sure Ann Rice would be rolling in her grave, if she was dead. Hicks can be vampires too ya know. If you don't know look up Alien Nation, I hear if you play it at the same time the music and words line up.

Grey's Anatomy - I have a wife and therefor I watch this show. Judge me not. However the show seems to know a guy like me is watching the show and gives me small masculine shout outs from time to time. Yesterday they ripped a guys face off and showed it. There was a kid in the operating room that said the same thing I said almost word for word "Is guy missing his face! No! bring it back I wanna see the guy with his face off!"

Girls Next Door - If your wife or girlfriend will watch this then so should you. Funny part is you know it is setting up to a funny conclusion since we know all the girls have been kicked out and Hef shacked up with the fugitive blond twins from backwoods who-cares-ville. That man is a living legend, and totally senile.

All reality TV - can die. Biggest loser I can dig on because it is a good thing really. Oh and to possibly shatter a few hearts? The Hills is NOT reality TV. It's as fake as wrestling.

Dexter - Serial killer is killing other serial killers and we get narration from a sociopath... I don't have anything bad to say here. I'm freaked out and rooting for the mass murderer.

House - I love this show now that we are out of the recruitment season. I get the feeling though that the ailments are getting a bit strained and after a while they are just going to start making stuff up. I frequently reference MythBusters when I see this show saying "Wait! I know that doesn't work!".

ER - is ending. Who was still watching?

Dancing with the Stars - Please god let Cloris Leachman win. I won't watch but I do look for her highlights online just to hear her talk. You can tell she has her assistant on the phone just before she goes out to see if the check cleared for this weeks bout of stupid crap.

Chuck - Funny in a Perfect Strangers/Alf sort of way. Basically if any cast members from Firefly shows up on a show I will watch for a while.

Gossip Girl - I'm just kidding. I would never watch this even just to make fun of it.

Terminator - No. No no no. Wait! Is that River?!?! Never mind, I'm in.

So anyway I guess I hate TV. These days I am reading The Dresden Files, and yes... I watched the show.

So that everyone is aware next week Wincustomize will be hosted on a new server based out of Chicago. Currently hardware and staff are being transported there. Weather forecasts as follows:


Chance of temporary slow downs, followed by intermittent hiccups in the early part of the week.

Later in the week expect great speed ups, better uploads, and sunny days! Bring the kids!



In all seriousness thank you for your continued patience as we improve our websites and services.

Seabass

[e digicons]:ninja:[/e]

I'm sticking this here to remind people to look at the large flag listed above.

If you have ANY trouble with the Demigod beta read: